We recently published a video made by the YPG in Rojava where an Italian comrade addresses our country from the Raqqa frontline, explaining the current situation in northern Syria, and calling for solidarity after the Turkish invasion of Jarablus and the bombings in Menbij.

The comrade also addresses some Italian politicians (Matteo Renzi, president of the council, Federica Mogherini, EU Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Staffan de Mistura, UN negotiator for peace in Syria, and Matteo Salvini, secretary of the Northern League) stressing their hypocrisy and their responsibilities with respect to the current situation of Rojava, Syria, the Middle East and the policies related to refugees.

The video also displays some fighters of the YPG and YPJ addressing the Italian people and at the same time spurring solidarity for the Kurdish struggle for the confederal cause in Syria.

The video ends with a tribute by the YPG-YPJ in memory of Valeria Solesin, the Italian girl killed by ISIS during the Paris attacks last November 13.

Raqqa Frontline, September 2, 2016

This is Syria, and this is the frontline of the war against ISIS.

This is the Rojava revolution, while on the other side of these trenches we have the Islamic State with its horrors; and over the hills is the city of Raqqa.

We are the Syrian Democratic Forces, the YPG and YPJ: the people’s protection units and the women’s protection units. Our army has more than one hundred thousand combatants: women and men; Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, Turkmen, internationalists. After the victory of Kobane, these forces have inflicted defeat after defeat to ISIS; and on May 25 we launched the offensive on Raqqa, in order to surround the city and cut off all communication between ISIS and the outside world.

On this front, in the city of Menbij in the Shebaa region, which we liberated, we have suffered hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries; but we are winning; and the greatest enemy that we face right now is not the one we have in front of us, but the one backstabbing us. It is the regional and international powers who claim they want freedom in Syria, but that actually are trying to strangle our resistance and our revolution.

Actually, for over six months we have been victims of a total economic, sanitary and diplomatic embargo, by Turkey and the KDP, a party whose militia controls the international border of Iraq. Because of this, we are increasingly fighting without any food or water, without even medicines to treat the wounded; and the people of Rojava are exhausted, thirsty, increasingly without electricity. The KDP also prevents journalists from entering, so that no one really knows what is happening here.

And now that Turkey has invaded Rojava and Syria, occupying Jarablus and making a massacre north of Menbij; now that the Turkish artillery fires throughout the whole Rojava, from Afrin to Tel Abyad, from Derbesiye to Amude up to Derik, also threatening Kobane; now that the embargo turned into an attack; there is all the more a need for people to come here; to denounce that the Islamic State, in Jarablus, has not fired a shot against the Turkish army, because it was a matter
of land swap; that the Turkish army has crossed the borders of Syria only in order to attack us, the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the political model of popular self-government that we defend – which terrorizes the Sultan Erdogan because it is also spreading within his own borders.

To denounce the elusive “Free Syrian Army” that all Western media talk about; when asking the Syrians here, they are met by laughter: because if something like that ever existed, it has been years since it ceased to do so; and the militias that installed themselves in Jarablus thanks to the support of Turkey and the West have names and surnames. They are called Ahrar al-Sham, Jabat al-Nusra Front-Fatah al-Sham (Al Qaeda), Liwa Sultan Murad: bands of fanatics which are in every way identical to ISIS, and ready to help ISIS to strike again in Europe by tomorrow.

Therefore I, an Italian fighter of the YPG, wish to address all of you who are listening from Italy, and ask you to raise a cry for the freedom of Jarablus and for the defense of Menbij, in the same way the cry in defense of Kobane was raised all over the world, two years ago – do you remember Kobane? What was conquered in Kobane two years ago, must be defended now. I realize that the names of these cities may seem distant to you, but believe me: what is happening here, in this global world, can be transformed into our grief as early as tomorrow, in Europe, and then unfortunately crying will not help: all of us must take our responsibilities right now.

For the same reason I’m addressing you, President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Government, Matteo Renzi: tweeting when the Sultan Erdogan insults our country is not enough. Take your responsibility: shut down – now! – all commercial, military and diplomatic ties with the Turkish state; in this way proving whether you really are on the side of those who fight the enemies of humanity, or if you stand to safeguard other interests.

Secondly, I am addressing you, Federica Mogherini, EU High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs. Under your term, European Union relations with Turkey have become increasingly embarrassing to the point that you want to hand over billions of euros to Erdogan the Sultan: he who has Kurdish civilians massacred within his borders, who has arrested thousands of opponents, who for years has been supporting all the most reactionary groups operating in Syria – including ISIS. You, you pretend not to know all these things, because Turkey is a strategic partner for the European Union, in military and commercial terms, and also in terms of your cynical migration management. Then you, you too have to tell us on which side you are: if you stand on the side of those who fight ISIS, or of those who use it.

Thirdly, I want to address also you, Staffan de Mistura, also an Italian, and Special Envoy of the United Nations in Syria. You excluded the Syrian Democratic Forces from any peace negotiations regarding Syria, although this is the largest people’s and revolutionary army all over the country; and in spite of the Syrian Democratic Congress representing it being the only organization able to secure a confederal future based on peace and coexistence among peoples for Syria. However, you have excluded us from peace negotiations because you were asked to do so, once again, by our enemy Sultan Erdogan; but then stand up for it in front of the world, de Mistura, and answer a
question: is your friendship with the Sultan more important than peace in a country that has been ravaged and destroyed?

Unfortunately there are good reasons to believe that you do not know how to answer this question, if it is true that you, in Geneva, even welcomed criminals of the Islamic Front with open arms – those who you call the “Syrian opposition”, but who actually are a bunch of fanatics who want to impose an Islamic state in all of Syria, just like ISIS, and are responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Christians, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds in Northern Aleppo. Nevertheless you shake their hands, because you know that behind the Islamic Front stands another one of your unpresentable friends: Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia is itself another Islamic state, beheading people in the stadiums, promoting the stoning of women, channeling the most massive covert
funding for ISIS in the entire Middle East; and yet you, de Mistura, you bow to Saudi Arabia in Geneva every time, and you know why? Because Saudi Arabia has oil. So please, you also need to clarify where you stand: if you are on the side of peace, or for the protection of other interests.

All the three of you need to clearly tell the people you govern what you are doing; but bare in mind this – and, above all, Italians be warned – all the weapons that the Italian government is selling to Saudi Arabia, all the money that the EU is giving to the Turkish government, all turn into bullets that kill us on this front, they turn into mines that tear our comrades apart; they turn into explosives that take so many civilian lives in the Middle East just as in Europe.

You claim to protect the people you govern, but you are only actors of a horrible spectacle in which, however, the victims are real; and the victims are us, the common people – both in Europe and Syria.

And in this regard: you, Matteo Salvini, who in this show have missed endless opportunities to shut up; you that on every new terrorist attack fly down like a vulture on the still warm corpses of the victims to sketch out your cheap propaganda, to try to put people against each other, to put the blame on poor people who have nothing to do with it; you only act in your personal interest, in your thirst for power, in your thirst for a career. Didn’t you say you were ready to come to Syria in person to fight ISIS? I searched for you here in Syria, Salvini, but I couldn’t find you. On the other hand, I found thousands of young Arabs, Kurds, Iranians, Turks, who shoulder to shoulder with us international volunteers fight ISIS, who are risking death like us; dying, losing their legs, arms, eyes, also to protect people like you; to protect their families and their loved ones, but also to protect our families, our loved ones.

Dear Italians, believe me: these are the only friends we have: the girls of Kobane, who defended their city against ISIS with their weapons in hand; the boys of Raqqa, who want to return to their city, in order to free it. They are the people who build, here in Rojava, the women’s revolution, the revolution of the communes; what we should do in Europe too.

Dear Italians and Europeans, these are the only true friends we have. This is why we ask you to support the Syrian Democratic Forces, the YPG and YPJ: get on the internet, inform yourselves; mobilize against the embargo that affects us, hit the road. We are in need of doctors, volunteers, food, medicines. We are in need of freedom of information. Here as elsewhere, there is no need for military invasions. The Middle East has seen too many already. What is needed is the support of a
revolution in arms: the Rojava revolution. Liberators do not exist: the people are freed by themselves; and this is being demonstrated by Rojava.

Finally, we want to send a tribute from this frontline in memory of Valeria Solesin, who fell in the Paris attacks last November, and to all the victims of ISIS attacks in Paris, in Brussels, in Nice, in Orlando, in Baghdad, in Beirut, in Ankara, in Suruc, in Qamishlo and in all the cities of Syria and the world which have suffered or suffer from ISIS violence. We do not forget them, as we do not forget all the fighters who fell for the freedom of Kurdistan, Syria, Middle East, for the freedom of Europe and the world.

Hevalen, Serkeftin!

Hasta la victoria siempre!

An Italian YPG fighter